How to open a file when it is being writted.

[raulbolanos]

Im constantly saving in one file but it takes a while to finish the process and I want to check sometimes how is everything going in this file, but it does not allow me to take a look because its being used at the moment. I heard, that there is not problem if I open the file with notepad, even thought I still get a message like this; The Process cannot access the file because it is being used by the process.

Here is an example code, tell me if the IO functions are wrong, if should I use other functions.

using System;
using System.Threading;
using System.Collections.Generic;
using IO = System.IO;

public class Test
{
    public static void Main()
    {
        int count = 0;

        while (true)
        {
            IO.FileStream fs = null;
            IO.BinaryWriter bw = null;
            System.Text.ASCIIEncoding enc = new System.Text.ASCIIEncoding();

            string path = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Desktop\\Test.tab";
            fs = IO.File.Create(path);
            bw = new System.IO.BinaryWriter(fs);

            Console.WriteLine("{0} second", count);
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
            bw.Write(count);
            bw.Close();
            count++;
        }
    }
}

Thank you.

[dannystommen]

I think you have this problem because you don't close the FileStream fs. Both the FileStream fs and BinaryWriter bw should also be disposed.

When you only want to write a number to a textfile, you can also use StreamWriter.

         int count = 0;
         string path = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Desktop\\Test.tab";
         while (true) {
            count++;
            StreamWriter SW = new StreamWriter(path, true); //the count is appended, if you want to overwrite use 'false'
            SW.WriteLine(count);
            SW.Flush();
            SW.Close();
            SW.Dispose();
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
         }

Or you can use the 'using' syntax. In that case the 'flush', 'close' and 'dispose' methods are executed automatically.

         while (true) {
            count++;
            using (StreamWriter SW = new StreamWriter(path, true)) { //the count is appended, if you want to overwrite use 'false'
               SW.WriteLine(count);
               Thread.Sleep(1000);
            }
         }

[raulbolanos]

I think you have this problem because you don't close the FileStream fs. Both the FileStream fs and BinaryWriter bw should also be disposed.

When you only want to write a number to a textfile, you can also use StreamWriter.

         int count = 0;
         string path = "C:\\Documents and Settings\\Administrator\\Desktop\\Test.tab";
         while (true) {
            count++;
            StreamWriter SW = new StreamWriter(path, true); //the count is appended, if you want to overwrite use 'false'
            SW.WriteLine(count);
            SW.Flush();
            SW.Close();
            SW.Dispose();
            Thread.Sleep(1000);
         }

Or you can use the 'using' syntax. In that case the 'flush', 'close' and 'dispose' methods are executed automatically.

         while (true) {
            count++;
            using (StreamWriter SW = new StreamWriter(path, true)) { //the count is appended, if you want to overwrite use 'false'
               SW.WriteLine(count);
               Thread.Sleep(1000);
            }
         }

Thank you very much.. it was very very helpful the using sintax, because of it I have advanced so much today.